A ProtonMail account was used to send bomb threats to schools in the region, so the government wants to ban the service outright.
  • Cheradenine@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    95·
    9 months ago

    Proton pulled their VPN servers out of India after they passed a law mandating logging.

    ‘you can connect to our new Smart Routing servers for India. These will give you an Indian IP address and behave just as our physical servers in India did. The only difference is that, in reality, they are based in Singapore.’

    More details here https://protonvpn.com/blog/servers-india/

  • Possibly linux@lemmy.zipEnglish
    48·
    9 months ago

    What’s scary is that China and India are to massive countries in terms of population. The way this is going most of humanity could end up living in countries with low respect for human rights.

    • whoareu@lemmy.caEnglish
      452·
      9 months ago

      I was beaten for standing against authoritarian government. The situation is so bad in India that I am afraid to reveal my religion in university. Lot of people in University tries to oppress me and I can’t even complaint because everyone is ok with this and they enjoy oppressing us minorities.

      I honesly feel like a jew living under nazi germany. 😞

  • akilou@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    30·
    9 months ago

    I work for the US government and Proton is blocked at the network level, so I can’t check my personal email at work. In that sense, the US has already “banned” it. In what other way could a government “ban” an email provider?

    • Possibly linux@lemmy.zipEnglish
      181·
      9 months ago

      Honestly doing personal tasks on your works network is not a great idea. If anything use wireguard to route your traffic back to your home. (You can flash OpenWRT and set this up)

      • akilou@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        3·
        9 months ago

        When I work from home, I can just not connect to the VPN and it’s fine. When I’m on site there’s no way around it

            • PainInTheAES@lemmy.worldEnglish
              6·
              9 months ago

              Even if they didn’t block it is it worth the risk? Sending mystery traffic home over a government network is always gonna be sus.

              • akilou@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
                1·
                9 months ago

                Of course! I can check my email on my phone. It’s not a huge deal, just a slight inconvenience.

            • Possibly linux@lemmy.zipEnglish
              11·
              9 months ago

              Well I guess it is up to you. If it violates your employers policy then don’t do it obviously but you can adjust your VPN to make it hard to differentiate between normal traffic and VPN traffic. It can work in China so it probably can work for you.

              If your that concerned about your work don’t use your phone or at the very least don’t connect to WiFi

          • themelm@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            2·
            9 months ago

            I’ve had corporate LANs that I couldn’t route around to my wireguard servers from even using netmakers turn server stuff which punches through most shitty lans.

              • themelm@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
                2·
                9 months ago

                Yes changed ports, I never went too hard on it as im not usually near an office and just used my hotspot for personal stuff.

                Also it’s never a good idea to try too hard circumventing corporate “security”

    • Aghast@lemmy.worldEnglish
      8·
      9 months ago

      That’s odd. I’m surprised they blocked it for you. I also work for the US federal government and I haven’t had any issues with using Proton at work. I wonder why the difference.

      • akilou@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        2·
        9 months ago

        It was fine until a few weeks ago. We moved into a new building and something with the network changed. Concurrently we also have to connect via the VPN a different way than we used to. With all of those changes Proton went from not blocked to blocked.

  • abrinael@lemmy.worldEnglish
    19·
    9 months ago

    A lot of this stuff is highly suspicious considering how long governments have been trying to ban VPNs and encrypted messaging. At some point I’d expect someone in favor of bans to commit activities like this to push services to block and governments to ban.

  • umami_wasabi@lemmy.mlEnglish
    16·
    9 months ago

    The government’s move is in line with a recent policy that has targeted services with end-to-end encryption. A host of encrypted apps were blocked at the start of last year — including the likes of Threema, Element, Wickrme, and Safeswiss — and the government is going after WhatsApp to disable end-to-end encryption, although it isn’t clear how that would even work.

    This is why GPG is still an important and valuable tool. You can use it on litteral anything and not relying on single point of failure. Paired with steganography no one will know the message even existed. Yet, not many are willing to learn nor support this anymore.

    Edit: use of more conservative wording Edit 2: correct spelling

    • Possibly linux@lemmy.zipEnglish
      5·
      9 months ago

      The problem with GPG is it is painful to use and draws attention. It would be better to use something like Briar, Session, Simplex Chat or Jami.

      (Jami hasn’t been audited so be careful)

      • umami_wasabi@lemmy.mlEnglish
        3·
        9 months ago

        GPG is painful. No doubt. But with the pain it gains agility. Any single apps and protocols enables secure communication, being TLS, Tor, GPG or any one you listed, can draw attention. However, apps are more vulnerable. Their traffic pattern can be analysed and block individually while GPG is protocol agnostic. Look how China GFW had block many E2EE apps/protocols.

        In today’s world, secure communication apps like SimpleX are more in flavor as it is way easier to use. I used them daily as my main communication method. But it’s also good to learn GPG as a backup when those apps fails.

        • 乇ㄥ乇¢ㄒ尺ㄖ@infosec.pubEnglish
          6·
          9 months ago

          You should take note of other services that are blocked since it could give you an idea of what your government is trying hide, by using OONI probe

          • RachelRodent@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
            6·
            9 months ago

            You think I don’t know? There is a reason that I connect to the internet only via VPN and my country generally uses DPI to censor sites and so on. Half of the population is paralised and propagandised by instagram, tiktok and the national TV. the rest are made to feel very powerless, hell most students are aiming to study the university aboard and never come back afterwards(me, I am the students), I am well aware of the mass censorship and the oppression of our government against marginalised minorities like immigrants, kurds and LGBTQ people(me). We have a putin sittuation over here the same far right fascist party wins every election and my only hope at the moment is to escape

  • leanleft@lemmy.mlEnglish
    3·
    9 months ago

    alternative opinion: LE has become overly reliant on cheap tricks like spying.

  • setVeryLoud(true);@lemmy.caEnglish
    31·
    9 months ago

    The extreme Indian nationalism in the comments is insane. They will lick any boot that comes to power in their country.